Thoughts on Journalist Sydney J. Harris

I just have a few things to say about Sydney J. Harris, who was a journalist whose columns were syndicated to over 200 newspapers. I remember reading them in the Des Moines Register years ago.

I ran across one of his books for sale on Amazon. I’ve never read any of them, but I found one of them, “Winners and Losers” on sale “new” for $111 and change. I was astonished. I admire his diction and learning, but I would never pay that much money for one of his books. You can buy them for less than $5, even on Amazon. You can read “Winners and Losers” for free on the Internet Archive.

You can also find a lot of quotes from Sydney J. Harris on the web. I found a collection which I thought were admirable. Funny thing is, the more I read, the more I thought he was a product of his times. I thought I could detect a little male chauvinism (maybe more than a little). The more quotes I read, the more I noticed he almost always used the word “men” or “man” and rarely mentioned women, unless you count:

“The commonest fallacy among women is that simply having children makes them a mother—which is as absurd as believing that having a piano makes one a musician.”

Nobody’s perfect.